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The original and short-lived reference to the region was Bogdania, after Bogdan I, the founding figure of the principality. The names Moldavia and Moldova are derived from the name of the Moldova River; however, the etymology is not known and there are several variants:[1][2]

a legend mentioned in Descriptio Moldaviae by Dimitrie Cantemir links it to an aurochs hunting trip of the MaramureşvoivodeDragoş, and the latter's chase of a star-marked bull. Dragoş was accompanied by his female hound called Molda; when they reached shores of an unfamiliar river, Molda caught up with the animal and was killed by it. The dog's name would have been given to the river, and extended to the country.

the GothicMulda (Gothic: 𐌼𐌿𐌻𐌳𐌰, Runic: ᛗᚢᛚᛞᚨ) meaning "dust", "dirt" (cognate with the English mould), referring to the river.

a Slavic etymology (-ova is a quite common Slavic suffix), marking the end of one Slavic genitive form, denoting ownership, chiefly of feminine nouns (i.e.: "that of Molda").

a landowner by the name of Alexa Moldaowicz is mentioned in a 1334 document, as a local boyar in service to Yuriy II of Halych; this attests to the use of the name prior to the foundation of the Moldavian state, and could even be the source for the region's name.

In several early references,[3] "Moldavia" is rendered under the composite form Moldo-Wallachia (in the same way Wallachia may appear as Hungro-Wallachia). Ottoman Turkish references to Moldavia included Boğdan Iflak (meaning "Bogdan's Wallachia") and Boğdan (and occasionally Kara-Boğdan - "Black Bogdania"). See also: Name in other languages.

In the early 13th century A.D., the Brodniks, a possible Slavic–Vlachvassal state of Halych, were present, alongside the Vlachs, in much of the region's territory (towards 1216, the Brodniks are mentioned as in service of Suzdal). On the border between Halych and the Brodniks, in the 11th century, a Viking by the name of Rodfos was killed in the area by Vlachs who supposedly betrayed him.[1] In 1164, the future ByzantineEmperorAndronicus I Comnenus, was taken prisoner by Vlach shepherds around the same region.

In 1353, Dragoş, mentioned as a Vlach Knyaz in Maramureş, was sent by Louis I to establish a line of defense against the Golden Horde forces on the Siret River. This expedition resulted in a polity vassal to Hungary, centered around Baia (Târgul Moldovei or Moldvabánya).

Bogdan of Cuhea, another Vlach voivode from Maramureş who had fallen out with the Hungarian king, crossed the Carpathians in 1359, took control of Moldavia, and succeeded in removing Moldavia from Hungarian control. His realm extended north to the Cheremosh River, while the southern part of Moldavia was still occupied by the Tatars.

After first residing in Baia, Bogdan moved Moldavia's seat to Siret (it was to remain there until Petru Muşat moved it to Suceava; it was finally moved to Iaşi under Alexandru Lăpuşneanu - in 1565). The area around Suceava, roughly correspondent to future Bukovina, formed one of the two administrative divisions of the new realm, under the name Ţara de Sus (the "Upper Land"), whereas the rest, on both sides of the Prut River, formed Ţara de Jos (the "Lower Land").

The principality of Moldavia covered the entire geographic region of Moldavia. In various periods, various other territories were politically connected with the Moldavian principality. This is the case of the province of Pokuttya, the fiefdoms of Cetatea de Baltă and Ciceu (both in Transylvania) or, at a later date, the territories between the Dniester and the Bug Rivers.

Petru I profited from the end of the Hungarian-Polish union, and moved the country closer to the Jagiellon realm, becoming a vassal of Władysław II on September 26, 1387. This gesture was to have unexpected consequences: Petru supplied the Polish ruler with funds needed in the war against the Teutonic Knights, and was granted control over Pokuttya until the debt was to be repaid; as this is not recorded to have been carried out, the region became disputed by the two states, until it was lost by Moldavia in the Battle of Obertyn (1531). Prince Petru also expanded his rule southwards to the Danube Delta, and established a frontier with Wallachia; his brother Roman I conquered the Hungarian-ruled Cetatea Albă in 1392, giving Moldavia an outlet to the Black Sea, before being toppled from the throne for supporting Theodor Koriatovich in his conflict with Vytautas the Great of Lithuania. Under Stephen I, growing Polish influence was challenged by Sigismund of Hungary, whose expedition was defeated at Ghindăoani in 1385; however, Stephen disappeared in mysterious circumstances, and the throne was soon occupied by Yury Koriatovich (Vytautas' favorite).

Alexandru cel Bun, although brought to the throne in 1400 by the Hungarians (with assistance from Mircea I of Wallachia), shifted his allegiances towards Poland (notably engaging Moldavian forces on the Polish side in the Battle of Grunwald and the Siege of Marienburg), and placed his own choice of rulers in Wallachia. His reign was one of the most successful in Moldavia's history, but also saw the very first confrontation with the Ottoman Turks at Cetatea Albă in 1420, and later even a conflict with the Poles. A deep crisis was to follow Alexandru's long reign, with his successors battling each other in a succession of wars that divided the country until the murder of Bogdan II and the ascension of Petru Aron in 1451. Nevertheless, Moldavia was subject to further Hungarian interventions after that moment, as Matthias Corvinus deposed Aron and backed Alexăndrel to the throne in Suceava. Petru Aron's rule also signified the beginning of Moldavia's Ottoman Empire allegiance, as the ruler agreed to pay tribute to SultanMehmed II.

Under Stephen the Great, who took the throne and subsequently came to an agreement with Kazimierz IV of Poland in 1457, the state reached its most glorious period. Stephen blocked Hungarian interventions in the Battle of Baia, invaded Wallachia in 1471, and dealt with Ottoman reprisals in a major victory (the 1475 Battle of Vaslui; after feeling threatened by Polish ambitions, he also attacked Galicia and resisted Polish reprisals in the Battle of the Cosmin Forest (1497). However, he had to surrender Chilia (Kiliya) and Cetatea Albă (Bilhorod-Dnistrovs'kyi), the two main fortresses in the Bujak, to the Ottomans in 1484, and in 1498 he had to accept Ottoman suzereignty, when he was forced to agree to continue paying tribute to Sultan Bayezid II. Following the taking of Hotin (Khotyn) and Pokuttya, Stephen's rule also brought a brief extension of Moldavian rule into Transylvania: Cetatea de Baltă and Ciceu became his fiefs in 1489.

Under Bogdan III cel Orb, Ottoman overlordship was confirmed in the shape that would rapidly evolve into control over Moldavia's affairs. Petru Rareş, who reigned in the 1530s and 1540s, clashed with the Habsburg Monarchy over his ambitions in Transylvania (losing possessions in the region to George Martinuzzi), was defeated in Pokuttya by Poland, and failed in his attempt to extricate Moldavia from Ottoman rule – the country lost Bender to the Ottomans, who included it in their Silistra Eyalet.

However, Moldavia and the similarly-affected Wallachia remained both important sources of income for the Ottoman Empire and relatively prosperous agricultural economies (especially as suppliers of grain and cattle – the latter was especially relevant in Moldavia, which remained an under-populated country of pastures). In time, much of the resources were tied to the Ottoman economy, either through monopolies on trade which were only lifted in 1829, after the Treaty of Adrianople (which did not affect all domains directly), or through the raise in direct taxes - the one demanded by the Ottomans from the princes, as well as the ones demanded by the princes from the country's population. Taxes were directly proportional with Ottoman requests, but also with the growing importance of Ottoman appointment and sanctioning of princes in front of election by the boyars and the boyar Council – Sfatul boieresc (drawing in a competition among pretenders, which also implied the intervention of creditors as suppliers of bribes). The fiscal system soon included taxes such as the văcărit (a tax on head of cattle), first introduced by Iancu Sasul in the 1580s.

Moldavia (in orange) towards the end of the 16th century

The economic opportunities offered brought about a significant influx of Greek and Levantine financiers and officials, who entered a stiff competition with the high boyars over appointments to the Court. As the manor system suffered the blows of economic crises, and in the absence of salarisation (which implied that persons in office could decide their own income), obtaining princely appointment became the major focus of a boyar's career. Such changes also implied the decline of free peasantry and the rise of serfdom, as well as the rapid fall in the importance of low boyars (a traditional institution, the latter soon became marginal, and, in more successful instances, added to the population of towns); however, they also implied a rapid transition towards a monetary economy, based on exchanges in foreign currency. Serfdom was doubled by the much less numerous slave population, composed of migrant Roma and captured Nogais.

The conflict between princes and boyars was to become exceptionally violent – the latter group, who frequently appealed to the Ottoman court in order to have princes comply with its demands, was persecuted by rulers such as Alexandru Lăpuşneanu and Ioan Vodă cel Cumplit. Ioan Vodă's revolt against the Ottomans ended in his execution (1574). The country descended into political chaos, with frequent Ottoman and Tatar incursions and pillages. The claims of Muşatins to the crown and the traditional system of succession were ended by scores of illegitimate reigns; one of the usurpers, Ioan Iacob Heraclid, was a Protestant Greek who encouraged the Renaissance and attempted to introduce Lutheranism to Moldavia.

In 1595, the rise of the Movileşti boyars to the throne with Ieremia Movilă coincided with the start of frequent anti-Ottoman and anti-Habsburg military expeditions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth into Moldavian territory (see Moldavian Magnate Wars), and rivalries between pretenders to the Moldavian throne encouraged by the three competing powers. The Wallachian prince Michael the Brave deposed Prince Ieremia in 1600, and managed to become the very first monarch to unite Moldavia, Wallachia, and Transylvania under his rule; the episode ended in Polish conquests of lands down to Bucharest, soon ended by the outbreak of the Polish-Swedish War and the reestablishment of Ottoman rule. Polish incursions were dealt a blow by the Ottomans during the 1620 Battle of Cecora, which also saw an end to the reign of Gaspar Graziani.

During the late 17th century, Moldavia became the target of the Russian Empire's southwards expansion, inaugurated by Peter the Great during the Russo-Turkish War of 1710-1711; Prince Dimitrie Cantemir's siding with Peter and open anti-Ottoman rebellion, ended in defeat at Stănileşti, provoked Sultan Ahmed III's reaction, and the official discarding of recognition of local choices for princes, imposing instead a system which relied solely on Ottoman approval – the Phanariote epoch, inaugurated by the reign of Nicholas Mavrocordatos. Short and frequently ended through violence, Phanariote rules were usually marked by political corruption, intrigue, and high taxation, as well as by sporadic incursions of Habsburg and Russian armies deep into Moldavian territory; nonetheless, they also saw attempts at legislative and administrative modernization inspired by The Enlightenment (such as Constantine Mavrocordatos' decision to salirize public offices, to the outrage of boyars, and the abolition of serfdom in 1749, as well as Scarlat Callimachi's Code), and signified a decrease in Ottoman demands after the threat of Russian annexation became real and the prospects of a better life led to waves of peasant emigration to neighboring lands. The effects of Ottoman control were also made less notable after the 1774 Treaty of Kucuk Kaynarca allowed Russia to intervene in favour of Ottoman subjects of the Eastern Orthodox faith - leading to campaigns of petitioning by the Moldavian boyars against princely policies.

In 1712, Hotin was taken over by the Ottomans, and became part of a defensive system that Moldavian princes were required to maintain, as well as an area for Islamiccolonization (the Laz community). Moldavia also lost Bukovina, Suceava included, to the Habsburgs in 1772, which meant both an important territorial loss and a major blow to the cattle trade (as the region stood on the trade route to Central Europe). The 1792 Treaty of Jassy forced the Ottoman Empire to cede all of its holdings in what is now Transnistria to Russia, which made Russian presence much more notable, given that the Empire acquired a common border with Moldavia. The first effect of this was the cession of Bessarabia to the Russian Empire, in 1812 (through the Treaty of Bucharest).

The first Moldavian rule established under the Statute, that of Mihail Sturdza, was nonetheless ambivalent: eager to reduce abuse of office. Sturdza introduced reforms (the abolition of slavery, secularization, economic rebuilding), but he was widely seen as enforcing his own power over that of the newly-instituted consultative Assembly. A supporter of the union of his country with Wallachia and of RomanianRomantic nationalism, he obtained the establishment of a customs union between the two countries (1847) and showed support for radical projects favored by low boyars; nevertheless, he clamped down with noted violence the Moldavian revolutionary attempt in the last days of March 1848. Grigore Alexandru Ghica allowed the exiled revolutionaries to return to Moldavia cca. 1853, which led to the creation of Partida Naţională (the "National Party"), a trans-boundary group of radical union supporters which campaigned for a single state under a foreign dynasty.

However, the Convention failed to note whether the two thrones could not be occupied by the same person, allowing Partida Naţională to introduce the candidacy of Alexander John Cuza in both countries. On January 17 (January 5, 1859 Old Style), in Iaşi, he was elected prince of Moldavia by the respective electoral body. After street pressure over the much more conservative body in Bucharest, Cuza was elected in Wallachia as well (February 5/January 24). Exactly three years later, after diplomatic missions that helped remove opposition to the action, the formal union created the United Principalities (the basis of modern Romania) and instituted Cuza as Domnitor (all legal matters were clarified after the replacement of the prince with Carol of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen in April 1866, and the creation of an independent Kingdom of Romania in 1881) - this officially ending the existence of the Principality of Moldavia.

Slavery (Romanian: robie) was part of the social order from before the founding of the Principality of Moldavia, until it was abolished in stages during the 1840s and 1850s. Most of the slaves were of Gypsy ethnicity. There were also slaves of Tatar ethnicity, probably prisoners captured from the wars with the Nogai and Crimean Tatars. The institution of slavery was first attested in a 1470 Moldavian document, through which Prince Stephan the Great frees Oană, a Tatar slave who had fled to Jagiellon Poland.[5]

The exact origins of slavery are not known, slavery being a common practice in Europe at the time. In the Byzantine Empire, they were slaves of the state and it seems the situation was the same in Bulgaria and Serbia until their social organization was changed by the Ottoman conquest. Historian Nicolae Iorga associated the Gypsy people's arrival with the 1241 Mongol invasion of Europe and considered their slavery as a vestige of that era, the Romanians taking the Gypsies from the Mongols as slaves and preserving their status. Other historians consider that they were enslaved while captured during the battles with the Tatars. The practice of enslaving prisoners may also have been taken from the Mongols. The ethnic identity of the "Tatar slaves" is unknown, they could have been captured Tatars of the Golden Horde, Cumans, or the slaves of Tatars and Cumans.[5] While it is possible that some Romani people were slaves or auxiliary troops of the Mongols or Tatars, the bulk of them came from south of the Danube, making slavery a widespread practice. The Tatar slaves, smaller in numbers, were eventually merged into the Gypsy population.[6]

Traditionally, Gypsy slaves were divided into three categories. The smallest was owned by the hospodars, and went by the Romanian-language name of ţigani domneşti ("Gypsies belonging to the lord"). The two other categories comprised ţigani mănăstireşti ("Gypsies belonging to the monasteries"), who were the property of Romanian Orthodox and Greek Orthodox monasteries, and ţigani boiereşti ("Gypsies belonging to the boyars"), who were enslaved by the category of landowners.[7][8]

The abolition of slavery was carried out following a campaign by young revolutionaries who embraced the liberal ideas of the Enlightenment. In 1844, Moldavian Prince Mihail Sturdza proposed a law on the freeing of slaves owned by the church and state. By the 1850s, the movement gained support from almost the whole of Romanian society, and, in December 1855, following a proposal by Prince Grigore Alexandru Ghica, a bill drafted by Mihail Kogălniceanu and Petre Mavrogheni was adopted by the Divan; the law emancipated all slaves to the status of taxpayers (citizens).[5][7]

Of late 15th century Moldavia, with an area of approximately 97,000 km2 (37,000 sq mi), the biggest part is located in Romania (47.5%), followed by the Republic of Moldova (30.5%) and Ukraine (22%). This represents 88% of Moldova's surface, 19.5% of Romania's surface, and 3.5% of Ukraine's surface.

The region is mostly hilly, with a range of mountains in the west, and plain areas in the southeast. Moldavia's highest altitude is Ineu peak (2,279m), which is also the westernmost point of the region.

1There is an ongoing dispute over whether Romanians and Moldovans are the same ethnic group, namely whether Moldovans' self-identification constitutes an ethnic group distinct and apart from Romanians or a subset. At the Moldovan and Ukrainian censa, citizens could declare only one nationality. Consequently, one could not declare oneself both Moldovan and Romanian.2Includes people who declared themselves as Romanians.